"I Hope This Song Starts a Craze"
Long Island Emo: Northeastern post-hardcore ignites international airwaves and writes itself into the emotions of the youth.
The Rise of Emo
The definition of emo music can be hard to pin down. However, the style of emo that entered the mainstream from garages in Long Island is sometimes known as "emotional hardcore," which is a derivative of punk characterized by its more confessional lyrics and beguiling melodies. Inspired by the volume and intensity of early hardcore punk bands, such as Bad Brains and Minor Threat , the term "emo" was first coined to describe groups who traded a traditional punk emphasis on rhythm and speed for "longer structures, more dynamic shifts, and personalized narratives" ( Mullen, 2017 ).
Emo music absolutely erupted in turn of the century America. As the music hit the mainstream, it became associated with an impossibly widespread emo subculture that seemed to speak largely to the youth. The following story map will trace the roots of this infectious genre and pose questions about its popularity, its discursive power, and its most important places.
Before we dive in, check out the following video covering the (debatable) "Top 10 Emo Bands of All Time" to familiarize yourself with the sound, style, and subculture. Pay special attention to numbers 4 & 5, as they will be the focus of the second half of this research.
Top 10 Best Emo Bands of All Time
Hardcore Roots
Emo music is often referred to as a style of "post-hardcore" music, which is a generalizing category for anything punk that came after the traditional hardcore bands mentioned above. So, to understand emo, we must first understand its predecessors.
Hardcore first emerged as "a faster, leaner, angrier splinter of punk rock." (Pattison, 2012) . It rejected traditional rock song structures in favor of playing "louder, harder, and faster" as a critique of new wave pop styles. Its unpredictability, "full-volume assaults," and aggressive masculinity also served to express macroscopic political disillusionment regarding Reagan-era policies, consumerism, and greed ( Ozzi, 2017 ). In an era of burgeoning neoliberalism and Right Wing incentives to conform to "white picket fence" ideologies, punks deliberately rejected "suit and tie" culture, and often opted to go shirtless while they played unrefined, raw, and raucous music ( Williams, 2016 ).
In the video below, you can hear a brazen rejection of the chorus-verse song structure. You will also notice that each instrument (vocals included) seem to be competing for the most volume and power. Furthermore, the interactions between band and audience display an intense musical and energetic exchange that was crucial to the hardcore camaraderie. It's easy to see the way that the scene provided a shared outlet for dispelling political frustration and unifying under a common sense of disillusion.
Minor Threat - Live at 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C. 1983.
With widespread political distaste, the hardcore scene found fertile soil in Washington D.C. But the abrasive sound and the intensity of the shows limited the demographic of potential audience, preventing it from ever breaking into the mainstream. In fact, the genre was largely categorized by it's anti-mainstreamness. It largely resonated with rebellious and restless youth who felt the brunt of a conservative political regime and had the time and resources to voice it. In response, they forged tight-knit underground communities where musicians could express themselves and fans could revel in a culture of disobedience.
Hardcore also provided a space where punks could be punks for the pure sake of punkness. The video below features an interview with Minor Threat frontman and co-founder of Dischord Records, Ian MacKaye. When asked a slew of formal political questions about the punk subculture and its aims, he can't manage much more than befuddlement, as explanations of punkdom seem to contradict its very essence. In this way, hardcore's "counterculture" seemed to respond to the cultural effects of Reaganism, rather than directly addressing specific politics.
Ian MacKaye interview (0:36-1:30)
Shifting Inward
By the mid 80's, a little known group called Rites of Spring turned the political punk into something personal. In doing so, they became the first band credited with the emo sound, even though the members themselves reject an association with the term. Rites' frontman Guy Picciotto was a Minor Threat fan who bent the rules (or anti-rules) of hardcore to derive more emotionally-charged, visceral live experiences with poetic, impassioned lyrics.
Academics and independent bloggers alike nominate Rites of Spring as the pioneers of emo, or at least the bridge-gappers that first permitted hardcore instrumentation and introspective lyrics to unite. Rites' first album "6 Song Demo," picked up by none other than Ian MacKaye's Dischord label, "offers a fascinating early glimpse of what this band took from hardcore, and what they left out. The speed, and the passion, remained. But all shred of machismo was excised, replaced by startling melody, stark expressions of vulnerability and lyrics that reached for the existential" ( Pattison, 2012 ).
One blogger elaborates, describing Rites' sound as "retaining a punk speed and frenzy," while also bringing "a totally new vocal approach to the mix." Indeed, the new introspective paradigm requires an emotive voice more than ever before, as Picciotto "delves into intensely personal lyrics while dripping with emotion and sweat... his voice breaking down at climactic moments into a throaty, gravelly, passionate moan" ( see blog post here ).
A writer for Guitar World magazine agrees that Rites music was "revolutionary in the face of prevailing hardcore sounds," calling them "a reflective band that expressed its intimate sentiments in a style that was never sappy, thanks to music that was both pulverizing and delicate" ( DeRogatis, 1999 ).
Rites Of Spring - "For Want Of" with lyrics
Compared to Bad Brains' indecipherable screams and uncompromising noise, Rites of Spring offers a shift towards the melodic and intimate emo sound. But this new approach wasn't just for the sake of musical experimentation.
Rites Of Spring
In 1985, the band joined forces with other hardcore (soon to be post-hardcore) groups Embrace and Dag Nasty to begin a social movement known as Revolution Summer. The movement intended to call into question the increasing culture of "machismo" and "moronic violence" that traditional hardcore was fast becoming. Pattison, cited above, sheds light on the problem that Revolution Summer was addressing:
"Understanding Rites of Spring involves understanding a little about the scene they grew out of... As the first-generation hardcore kids themselves were hitting their early 20s, a younger generation was bubbling up, one whose understanding of the music had been shaped by sensationalist news reporting, which largely depicted punks as thugs and vandals. "There was a situation where the shows were becoming increasingly, moronically violent," Ian MacKaye told one interviewer, "and a lot of people were like: 'fuck it, I'll drop out, I don't want to be a part of this any more.'" (Pattison, 2012)
And so, as media cooptation led to what Rites' saw as a misunderstanding of hardcore, the band responded with new modes of expression that sound a whole lot like the personal lyrics and heart-wrenching delivery of emo. The video below is a full-length Rites of Spring performance from the 9:30 Club during Revolution Summer. Note the changes in instrumentation as well as crowd/band relationship.
Rites of Spring - Live at the 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C. 1985, Revolution Summer
The aforementioned band Embrace, fronted by Ian MacKaye, itself represented a breaking point for hardcore music. One of the genre's central figures stood with the Revolution, ditching the old scene for the new emphasis on emotion and personal plights (DeRogatis, 1999). Minor Threat, if you can recall, was one of Guy Picciotto's biggest inspirations, and just two years after playing together during Revolution Summer, MacKaye and Picciotto would leave their respective bands to form the post-hardcore powerhouse outfit, Fugazi .
Guy Picciotto (Rites of Spring) and Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat) form Fugazi in 1987. (Waiting Room)
"It's just f*cking cool to see that man, so many people united under the power of music. No fighting, no filming. Just pure expression of enjoyment..." - youtube comment by "will roc"
Indeed, violence is less palpable and musical expression seems to come to the fore in Fugazi's post-hardcore. Though Fugazi never quite achieved the emotional transitiveness of bands that followed, it supplanted many of the ideas from Revolution Summer into the mainstream. It would also plant the seed for the second wave of emo, and wave #2 would make a gigantic splash.
So...What About Long Island?
Now that we know where and how emo-core became a thing, it's time to visit one of the most crucial hotbeds responsible for breaking the genre into international headphones. What made Long Island--an unlikely place for massive cultural undertakings--a hub for the infectious effect of emo? How did all its geographic, socio-economic, and cultural traits culminate in a particularly new emo sound? Who were the major players?
A New Punk Is Born
"In a cultural moment when “cynicism was a turnoff, and artists willing to share something of themselves were held in high regard” (Moon), the emo subculture allowed boys to be emotionally earnest, providing a space for expressions of non-normative performances of masculinity." (Ryalls, 2012)
No one embodies the transition to "new punk" like Eddie Reyes. Already a veteran of the Long Island music scene by the time he started Taking Back Sunday in 1998, Reyes had been "showing up, turning up and rockin’ out" with an assortment of rock outfits since he was just 14 years old ( Pettigrew, 2019 ).
Long Island "rock hero" Eddie Reyes (front right) with Taking Back Sunday
He started with the hardcore group Mind Over Matter in the early 90s, which would influence neighboring screamo and "nu-metal" bands Thursday and Glassjaw . Feeling the brunt of the tired hardcore scene, Eddie then opted for a more "indie emo" sound a band called Inside. From there, he began yet another project categorized as "melodic hardcore" sound with The Movielife in 1997 ( LI Music Scene Fandom ).
The gradual and subtle differences between each of these seminal endeavors perfectly articulates the emergence of the emotive punk rocker. It also exposes the underbelly of a bustling Long Island punk scene leading up to the new millennium, where bands were forming and breaking up everyday, searching for the right fit ( Manley, 2013 ).
Below is a video of the aforementioned Glassjaw, formed in 1993 by Bellmore, NY natives Daryl Palumbo and Justin Beck, playing a small Long Island venue in 1999. The band has been credited with "blending roots of New York hardcore and the melodic sounds associated with early 2000s screamo," and is described as simultaneously "heavy and soft" and "unique and aggressive" ( Tooni, 2017 ). Note Palumbo's stage dive in the final minute.
Glassjaw - Full Live Set Somewhere on Long Island (1998)
There's something about diving into a group of people you know are gonna catch you. - Ian MacKaye
And so, as all of these pop-punk predecessors rocked the same basements and legion halls, the LI scene gained traction ( Manley, 2013 ). The appeal came not only from the community of like-minded musicians experimenting with their newfangled vulnerability, but also from the strength of their following, which most likely sprouted from a gang of neighborhood pals. Though the Movielife and Glassjaw never quite hit the mainstream (at least not before fellow LI bands launched the genre into fame), their emotional transitiveness and expression of inner woes earned them a "cult-like following" that was typical of emo bands.
Pouring your heart out on stage has some perks, right?
3. I Will Play my Game Beneath the Spin Light (1:25)
"My secrets for a buck//Watch me as a cut myself wide open//On this stage as I am paid to spill my guts." - Jesse Lacey on "I Will Play My Game Beneath The Spin Light"
Indeed, Jesse. The pathos of emo music provides a portal right into the songwriter's soul, and once fans peered inside, they couldn't look away.
Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, & The Mainstream
As the millennia came to a close, the bubble would finally burst as Taking Back Sunday (1999) and Brand New (2000) entered the scene with a bang. Inspired by a variety of post-hardcore bands, ranging from to Weezer to Archers of Loaf to Morrissey of The Smiths , these pop-punk masterminds took song writing and sonic feeling to a new level.
After self-releasing a 4 song demo in 2000 and playing a measly 2 live shows, Brand New was immediately scooped up by a relatively credible label, Triple Crown Records. Here, the group recorded their freshman record in, Your Favorite Weapon (2001), which was a wildly successful, juvenile-sounding pop-punk compilation focused on the trials and tribulations of being a teenage boy.
In an enticing explosion of angst and ardor, Lacey's adolescent voice, still nasally and child-like, chimes and shouts over insistent drum beats and blazing guitars riffs. Ranging from anthems about staying "home alone on a Saturday night," to sentimental acoustic ballads about sipping whiskey on the overpass and "staying 18 forever," the album exploits the age-old and ultra-relatable tales of teenage rebellion, unrequited love, and heartache.
While all the songs are at once delectably punky and melodically charming, the album became known for more than that. In the 9th song on the record "Seventy Times 7," Lacey reveals an allusion to a legendary pop-punk rivalry between himself and John Nolan of Taking Back Sunday that would take the fanbase by storm.
In the most visceral and gut-wrenching sequence on the record, Lacey shouts, "Have another drink and drive yourself home//I hope there's ice on all the roads//and you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt//and again when your head goes through the windshield." Listen to the full-length version below.
Brand New - Seventy Times 7 Lyrics
Here, Lacey utilizes shockingly brutal imagery as a device to capture the gravity of his despair. Although rhetorical violence is a common emo tool for emotional transitiveness, this song hits hard. What could possibly hurt that bad?
John Nolan (left) and Jesse Lacey (right) as school-age friends
Let's back up a bit. Born and raised in the residential cesspool that was Long Island punk, Jesse Lacey and John Nolan were not only former bandmates, but best friends. They attended grammar school together and both enrolled at General Douglas MacArthur High School, a private catholic school in Levittown, NY where Nolan urged Lacey to take up the bass guitar ( Berman, 2017 )
In 1999, guided by the infinite wisdom of LI rock guru Reyes, the two friends started playing for Taking Back Sunday together, with Lacey on the bass and Nolan as co-lead vocalist and guitarist. But shortly after the group formed, common folklore says that Lacey would catch Nolan sleeping with his longtime high school girlfriend in dramatic fashion. While there probably wasn't enough space for the two of them anyway, Lacey responded by ditching TBS to front his own band, fittingly named Brand New.
As any good emo musician would, both Lacey and Nolan took to the studio with their respective bands and recorded albums about the altercation. In doing so, they drew thousands of drama-hungry fans into their web of emotional rendering.
Nolan responds a few months later with the release of Taking Back Sunday's first studio record Tell All Your Friends (2002) on a song called "There's No 'I' in Team." In an equally violent and searing retort, Nolan with his notoriously raspy voice, gasps, "Best friends means I'll pull the trigger//best friends means you get what you deserve." Later in the breakdown, he quotes a Lacey sample, repeating the line, "Is this what you call tact//You're as subtle as a brick in the small of my back//So let's end this call//And end this conversation."
4. There's No 'I' In Team
Once it's revealed, this friendship-turned-rivalry is the thread that runs through both bands' debut albums, and may even trickle into subsequent ones. On Brand New's 2003 album Deja Entendu, the newly arrogant Lacey taunts, "Oh, we're so//C-C-C-Controversial...These are the words you wish you wrote down//This is the way you wish your voice sounds" and, more insidiously, "I hope you come down with something they can't diagnose//Don't have a cure for." He later sings over an onslaught of instrumentals, "You can't keep a secret if it never was a secret to start//Oh, so let it go" (Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't, 2003). All of these stabs are presumed by fans to be an extension of the Nolan altercation and/or more Long Island drama with another TBS member, Adam Lazzara, even though the two bands toured together in 2002.
Though it's debatable whether this tactful rivalry was a scheme to galvanize a following in a rap-battle like fashion, or an authentic, emotionally-loaded expression of betrayal, the point remains the same: the close-knit Long Island emo community coupled with deeply personalized, inflammatory narratives allowed the genre to dig its talons into the youth in ways that hardcore never could.
In other words, the familiar--and franky, very "mainstream"--stories of suburban, white, high school kids breaking each other's hearts made punk palpable. Prior to this shift, the term "pop-punk" would have felt like an oxymoron, the former representing normative and "popular" paradigms, the latter being deeply concerned with resistance and rejection to them. But, in an amalgamation of hardcore sonics and normative, suburban sensibilities, Long Island put a particularly complex "pop-punk" genre on the map.
Residences, schools, and venues relevant to LI punk scene
Intrusive and Arrogant?
In 2006, Nolan's band continued the trend on a song called Liar, Liar (It Takes One To Know One) chanting, "Liar, Liar//If we're keeping score//We're all choir boys at best//Intrusive and arrogant." Whether or not this lyric is directly written for Lacey or not, it is the possibility that it could be that keeps fans engaged.
Taking Back Sunday - Liar (It Takes One To Know One)
What's even more interesting about this line, though, is the way that Taking Back Sunday seems to encompass an essential truism of emo movement in one fittingly melodic chorus. At its core, emo is an "intrusive" with a masculine emotionality that has the power to reverberate for generations to come.
While the aggression of hardcore punk seemed to function as means violently guarding one's innermost feelings, emo seeks to consume the listener within them, obsessively sharing and processing the most traumatic and anguishing encounters. Listening to emo music, at least in the case of Brand New and Taking Back Sunday in the early 2000s, was akin to attending a loud, abrasive poetry reading (albeit with screeching instruments and screaming fans), with each poem breathing life into the speaker's deepest and darkest interpersonal affairs, fears, and memories. The words and their residual pain spread like wildfire across international airwaves, effectively "starting a craze" as Lacey wished, and imbedding themselves into the lives of the youth. With all the power of a mantra, people recite them, etch them in their skin, and adhere to them like a holy book.
Brand New tattoo
In sum, what emo proves is that people care about people. Relationships (in the case of Nolan and Lacey, those that have gone sour) are the crux of human experience. Perhaps emo, which found footing during an era that was increasingly more digital, functioned as a mode of reconnecting with one another through visceral, and oftentimes deliberately graphic soundwaves. Perhaps, the drive to dig deep inside oneself to feed an insatiable and ever-consuming audience was born of a constitutive lack of meaningful interaction and exchange. Perhaps, emo fans latched onto the suffering of Nolan and Lacey (among many others) as a surrogate form of emotional exploration that has been stunted or restricted in our modern lives. In this lens, finding a new outlet for cultural strife is as traditionally punk as you can get.
In this video of a more recent Brand New set however, notice the difference in the way bands interact with the audience compared to the height of hardcore. Here, the exchange is much more visceral, a sonic and psychological outpouring rather than a physical one.
Brand New - Austin City Limits 2015 - Full Set
Granted, the massive arena afforded by "popular punk" removes the intimacy of dingy basements and tiny venues. There is a physical barrier here. Still, fans are showing appreciation by singing the words flawlessly back to Lacey, rather than flailing their limbs and exchanging sweat and spit with the band members. In a macroscopic lens, this comparison could reveal a larger societal shift from the external to the internal, the overt to the covert. On the ground, it's a symbol of the way that Lacey's inner turmoil has wedged itself into the psychic sphere of hundreds of thousands of listeners.
It didn't occur to me until I turned around at a show and saw thousands of people screaming "Die young and save yourself" with bloodshot eyes that I realized, perhaps, expression with this kind of power may not always be positive.
Brand New - Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades
The Power of Song
As compelling and unifying as emo can be, and as many positive relationships and support systems that can grow out of it, the power it has to shape public consciousness has always been alarming to me. Described as having "soundtracked adolescence," the fans that "listened to [Brand New] as teens tended to stayed with them into adulthood," and the music often functioned as an old friend ( MacGowan, 2017 ). Further evidenced by the widespread emo subculture that flourished in its wake, the music does more than entertain--it defines, it reifies, it forms, it identifies. A mere Google search of emo subculture would reveal the way that the music is associated with mental illness, self-harm, and even suicide.
So, does the music provide a sense of solace to pre-existing illness and social estrangement? Or does the romanticization of violence and self-loathing bring these feelings to the fore? While the answer is up for debate and probably involves a little bit of both, I think it is important for listeners to be aware and awake to the structures emo tropes promote. But, given emo's tendency to write itself into subconscious of youth crowds, the particularly dark and complex themes presented by bands like Brand New can feel like an alluring, non-consensual cooptation of the psyche.
...Much like Jesse Lacey's sexual conduct. Illuminated by his recent sexual assault allegations, the paradigm of "sad boys" and "slutty girls" propagated by common emo tropes are also harmful to ingest. Consider this quote from a former loyal Brand New follower, freshly disillusioned by the allegations:
"The emo scene to which Brand New belonged was inherently sexist: all-male bands, and the only women who are associated to their music are those who are viciously demonized in their songs. This creates a disturbing power dynamic. Emo fans were (from what I saw, at least) mostly younger and predominantly female; whose admiration for music was intense. It wasn’t just a song, but a mentality to live by. Male emo icons like Lacey would be idolized by the crowds at his gigs, places where the music was meant to create a safe place, an escape and a refuge." - (MacGowan, 2017)
Indeed, it is apparent (and accepted) that the emo scene was predominantly white, male, heterosexual, and relatively privileged (given their tendency to self-produce records). Considering these facts, it seems reasonable to assume that the space these angry young boys are afforded to express themselves may paradoxically reinscribe notions of toxic masculinity, racism, sexism, and homophobia (Ryalls, 2012).
Me Vs. Maradona Vs. Elvis - Brand New [LYRICS INCLUDED]
And so, as their ideals plummet through the airwaves, uninhibited and revered by the still-forming societies of the future, emo musicians pummel us with emotional allure and the oft-refreshing invitation to feel deeply. But, as a former and current emo fan myself, I think we must practice discernment regarding just how deep we let these narratives run.
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